


Smile

by rebelLinks



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Backwards Timeline, Character Death, Depression, I don't know if I should tag that but gosh dang it I will, Military stuff????, The Connie and the Insurrection leader things is lightly hinted
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-22
Updated: 2014-10-22
Packaged: 2018-02-22 04:38:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2494754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rebelLinks/pseuds/rebelLinks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When death comes it comes quickly<br/>Not painlessly<br/>The stark opposite of it, actually. Sharp, and regretful, and oh, so hurtful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! So this is my first fanficton in like... years. It's the first anything I've written in years that hasn't been related to school. So sorry if it's kind of confusing.  
> The story goes backwards, starting at CT's death and going through her life. So yeah.

When death comes it comes quickly  
Not painlessly  
The stark opposite of it, actually. Sharp, and regretful, and oh, so hurtful.   
Perhaps what hurts most is how fast it is. How little time there is to wonder if it was right.  
No time to explain, to rationalize, to apologize.  
No time to hope that she gets it, no time to hope that they forgive her, no time to hope that it all ends well.  
No time to focus on the arms holding her  
No time to wonder if they were the right arms  
But she’s never really had the time to do what she wanted  
If she could have looked back, she would have realized that the majority of her life consisted of nothing more than rash decisions in what she hoped was the right direction.  
If she could have looked back, she would have seen a lot of things.  
If she would have looked back she would think there was not much in it all.  
She would have wondered if it was all worth it.  
Despite not having the time, she wonders this anyway.  
When her mouth opens it speaks on auto-pilot, it says what it needs too.  
It’s not what she truly thinks  
It’s too calm to be what she really thinks  
Her mind is a jumble of questions and anger and fear  
But she might as well finish what she started, her mind says.  
Once it is finished though, there is nothing left but her.  
Nothing left to tell her what to say  
And both too much time and too little to say what should be said.  
In the end she says nothing  
She almost speaks  
Her mouth opening, and closing, and opening again  
As each sentence comes to the surface of her conscience   
Only for fear of failure to shove it back under the water  
And then there is nothing more  
Just the pain she feels  
And the regret that overpowers it.

~

She fears she was wrong.  
It’s not a new fear.  
If she’s honest that fear is very, very old.  
But she has not been honest in a very long time  
She does not believe she will be honest again.  
She knows her time is short  
She knows that if she does not move now she will never have another chance.  
She hopes they forgive her.  
If you had asked her years before she’d say they would  
If you asked her now she’d laugh  
Because how can they forgive her.  
She can’t forgive herself.  
She wonders, somewhere back in her mind, if this is how it was supposed to go.  
If it was the right path  
The right decisions.  
But there is no time for that  
There is no time for her  
Not with what she knows  
Her mind and her resources are far more important than her conscience.  
So she plans  
She knows that her end is coming  
If she’s honest, it’s already here.  
But she is never honest  
And so she leaves behind a breadcrumb trail  
And she hopes the right person finds it  
And she hopes she reacts the way she needs her to.  
She gathers the information, and she hides it,  
Leaving nothing more than what she needs to fuel her to dig deeper,  
And a video she records herself  
Once they’re all asleep  
In a corner the video camera’s don’t reach.  
Without thinking, she signs off,  
And before it ends, from her lips,  
Slips the phrase   
‘Your friend’  
She wonders if it’s true  
…  
She thinks it is  
But she has thought a lot of things.

~

She thinks she has finally found it  
She hopes she has  
After so many wrong turns  
And terrible choices  
She thinks that maybe  
Just maybe  
She’s found the place she’s been looking for  
She finds people she’s encountered before  
All new faces, all new armour and voices and lives,   
But the same old sadness.  
The same anger  
And disappointment  
And exhaustion.   
And she almost feels at home in it.  
But once it all gets rolling, she can see it in them to  
That urge that powers her  
That desire to fix things.  
She sees it manifest in separate ways  
It inspires her, really  
She sees it in the terrible jokes  
And the nurturing comments  
And the desperation to train harder  
And the orders for others to train harder.  
She smiles  
She does not smile when others are around  
Not at first  
She learned quickly that these sorts of people were not the kind that you show kindness to normally  
But as she would fall asleep  
Or once she was alone with her thoughts   
She would feel her face lift  
Because she knew this was the chance she had been looking for.

~

She signs up without a single thought to it.  
After the last mistake  
After how wrong it went  
She had nearly sworn to give up.  
But they had found her in the nick of time  
Told her that they saw great kindness in her  
Tell her they want to change the world  
Tell her they have a solution that will stop the war  
A solution that will help people  
A solution that will save people  
She puts her name on the list in what she thinks might be milliseconds  
They say they will contact her when they’re ready for her  
She spends the next couple months standing closer to the phone  
She’s so ready for things to go right  
She so needs things to go right.

~

She swears she has died  
The attack came from nowhere  
No one was ready  
And the fires spread  
And the houses collapsed  
And her tired, small frame was buried before she could tell what happened.  
Centuries seem to pass buy  
Much longer than she thinks it should take a person to die  
Till the rubble starts shifting  
And, hoping heaven should not pass her by  
And leave her in her own tiny limbo  
She cries out  
At first to be heard  
And then just to cry  
She had not realized she had yet to cry  
Yet once it started it would not stop  
In between her sobs she hears voices   
Faint, yet determined  
And before she knows it there is a blinding light  
And the face of an angel pulls her from her prison  
She can’t stop crying  
As the angel holds her close  
And tells her it’s alright to cry  
And once she stops  
For she can cry no more   
The angel tells her it’s also alright to smile  
She asks the angel if she has died  
And the angel laughs  
The angel tells her she is alive, and things will be alright, and she will be safe now.  
And she cries some more.  
The angel stays with her  
Despite the other soldiers telling her it’s time to move,  
There’s others to help  
The angel stays  
And tells her it’s going to be fine  
And she smiles.

And once she smiles, she can not stop  
Because the angel does to  
And she doesn’t seem to notice the fires anymore  
Or the stench of death and plasma  
Because she can tell things will be okay.  
When she stops smiling the feeling goes away  
So she doesn’t.  
Eventually the angel must leave.  
Yet as she watches her go  
She makes a promise  
That no matter what she does,  
No matter where she goes  
She’s going to make the world a place where people smile  
She thinks a good place to start would be to be like the angel  
It’s as good of a place as any.

As soon as she is old enough she enlists.  
Because a soldier saved her life  
So she might as well use that life to save others.


End file.
